Category Archives: Student Blog

Athletes and the Arts: Live Webcast Friday, March 11 at 5pm CST!

Join us on Friday March 11 at 5pm CST for a live webcast of:

The Performance Workshop presented by The Performers’ Network in conjunction with the Center for Music and Arts Entrepreneurship (CFMAE)!

Calling all high level musicians, educators and students! Do you suffer from symptoms related to conditions or injuries interfering with your ability to perform?

Join Kathleen Riley, YMWI Music Performance & Rehabilitation Specialist and John Chong, MD, Musicians Clinics of Toronto, as they introduce the use of biofeedback for analysis and retraining for pianists’ technical approach to the instrument. With this tool we can assess technical problems and injuries as well as optimize musicians’ performances.

The session offers of live demonstrations of the techniques on two of New Orleans greatest pianists: David Torkanowsky and Jon Cleary. Discover the key role pedagogues will play in the health and well being of performers and students. This dynamic presentation introduces an exciting way to improve quality of life through a music performance specialist and medical doctor team approach to music performance.

This dynamic session introduces ProformaVision, a new software program that simultaneously layers and analyzes two camera HD videography with surface electromyography (sEMG) and midi data. This state-of-the-art technology works in conjunction with Yamaha Disklavier™ pianos, Clavinovas and the AvantGrand. For the first time we can look at performers “under a microscope.” Body alignment, muscle tension and MIDI measures provide the basis for a comprehensive interdisciplinary analysis of each piano performance.

Kathleen Riley will help you understand why certain body alignment and hand and finger positions are more optimal for students, offer improved practice techniques, and advice on playing painlessly and stress free. You will build an awareness of how to help students use their bodies more efficiently, creating greater endurance and ease in musical performance.

This event will be streamed live on AthletesandtheArts.com!

Rumors Abound Over U.S. Launch of Spotify

Spotify, the Swedish on-demand music streaming service that has been making waves in Europe has also been building a considerable amount of buzz in the U.S. in speculation over its impending launch date.

The start-up has already secured licensing deals with Sony Music Entertainment, E.M.I, and is recently reported to be close to finalizing an agreement with Universal Music Group.

Spotify boasts 10 million registered users in Europe, 750,000 of which are reported to be using paid services.

Rumors have been spinning about a possible SXSW launch for the service in the U.S. but some sources indicate that final licensing negotiations are still a way off.

Whatever, the firm launch date, Spotify is definitely slated for a U.S. release some time in the relatively near future, leaving music industry analysts, bloggers, and commentators in strong anticipation.

For more on this story visit Billboard.biz

Music Industry Forum: Blue Note Product Manager Shaneika Brooks Live Stream!

Join us on this evening (Monday 2.28) at 5pm CST via livestream for Music Industry Forum from Loyola University New Orleans! 

This week’s guest will be Ms. Shaneika Brooks:

Shaneika Brooks has held many positions in the music industry primarily at a number of record labels. Currently, Ms Brooks is the Product Manager at Blue Note Records where she has overseen projects for notable artists including Al Green and Norah Jones.

Forum will be streamed live right here: http://www.cfmae.org/forum-webcast/

Music Industry Forum is a production of the Center for Music and Arts Entertainment.

 

Album Release Schedules in the Digital Age (DMN)

Photo Courtesy of Digital Music News

Digital Music News ran a post recently about how album release schedules have evolved in the modern era.

What used to be extremely strict and minutely-detailed plans for marketing, promotion, and distribution leading up to a specific Tuesday release were thrown into chaos with the advent of downloads and most importantly the prominence of early leaks. A new formula, however seems to be emerging which has restored a bit of order for musicians, labels, and fans alike.

Incorporating elements such as crowdfunding, street teaming, release parties, and social media promotion are some of the aspects of the new model.

For the full story, visit Digital Music News here: http://bit.ly/eWidKt

How self-managed Datarock pay their 50 person team (via DMN)

Photo Courtesy of henneganbrothers.com

Digital Music News recently ran a story about Norwegian electro rock group Datarock and how the band, who is completely self-managed and releases their own material manage to pay the approximately 50 people associated with their team.

Among other things, the band mentions the priority of its revenue streams: “live shows first, merchandise second, publishing third, and then albums at the very last.”

Datarock is indicative of a type of new model emerging in the music industry which exists as a large collaboration across an extended team and circumvents traditional industry establishments such as record labels. While not everyone associated with Datarock’s team makes a full-time living, the group prides itself on always paying people for their work and relying heavily on reinvesting revenues directly back into their organization.

For the complete story, visit Digital Music News here.

New Radiohead Album = Next Experiment in Album Pricing/Packaging

Radiohead announced today that they will be releasing their next album in a variety of formats, continuing the experiment they began to much attention with the release of ‘In Rainbows’.

While ‘In Rainbows’ was released via the band’s website in a ‘pay what you will’ format, the new album: ‘The King of Limbs’ will require fans to pay but will offer several price and packaging points.

Starting Saturday, February 19th, fans will be offered the following options:
Digital Only
-An mp3 download option encoded at 320kbps for $9.99
-An uncompressed WAV format (at full CD quality) for $14.99

Physical
The band is pioneering a new format which they are referring to as “Newspaper Album” which will include 2 clear vinyl records; a CD; many large and small sheets or artwork; and a digital download.
-Newspaper album + mp3 download will run for $48.00
-Newspaper album + WAV download will run for $53.00

It will be extremely interesting and relevant to the state of the music industry to observe how this new pricing and packaging strategy plays out for the band. The release of ‘In Rainbows’ is reported by most sources to have been a commercial success although it remains unclear at this juncture how the absence of a free option will affect total downloads in the case of ‘The King of Limbs’.

With this release, Radiohead is continuing a trend in the music industry of offering premium packages to incentivize diehard fans to purchase higher priced items while also offering lower-priced content to more casual listeners. Other artists to experiment with this type of packaging and pricing modification in recent years include Nine Inch Nails and Of Montreal among others.

-Patrick Reagin-
CFMAE

Making Money From Your Music in Foreign Countries

-Jeff and Todd Brabec-

For most U.S. songwriters and recordings artists, initial activity and success almost always comes from activity in the United States. Radio, television and Internet performances, record sales (both physical sales and downloads), synch licenses for songs in films, television, video games and advertising commercials – all of these generate royalties in the U.S. – sometimes large as in the case of a hit song or television theme – other times minimal as in the case of a webcast performance.

But what happens when your song is played on a radio station in Canada, the U.K. or Ireland, or is in an independent film released in movie theaters in France, Germany, Japan or Australia, or any other country of the world for that matter?

Are royalties being collected? And by whom? What do you have to do to get paid? Those are the questions you need answers to when dealing with any activity in the foreign marketplace.

Foreign Country Royalty Collection Organizations
Performances of U.S. writers’ works in foreign territories can be a good and sometimes major source of songwriter and composer income.

To collect it though you have to know what you are doing as every country of the world has its own procedures, policies and laws governing the licensing, performance and sale of music in its territory. In addition, every country has its own collection societies for the negotiation, collection and distribution of performance and mechanical monies – both for its own writer and publisher members as well as members of U.S. collection societies.

These foreign collection societies have payment rules many times very different from those in the U.S. in addition to sometimes taking significant deductions from U.S. writers and publishers royalties prior to sending the money back to the U.S. Some of these societies are very transparent whereas others are not.

Mechanical Royalties (Physical Record Sales and Downloads)

In practically every country in the world, there is a mechanical royalty society collecting for songwriters and music publishers for the sale of songs on physical singles and albums as well as downloads of single tracks and albums.

As opposed to the 9.1¢ statutory writer and publisher statutory rate paid by a record label for each song sold in the U.S., foreign countries normally base their payments on a percentage of the RSP (Retail Sales Price) or PPD (Purchase Price to Dealer) of the track or album. For example, in the U.K. the percentage for the sale of physical product is 8.5% of the dealer price of an album with Europe on a 9.009% formula. In Canada, the song rate is 8.3¢ Canadian per physical track sold.

If the song is sold as a download though, entirely different rates apply – a situation very different from the uniform U.S. rate of 9.1¢ for both physical and download sales. In Canada, the rate is 12.2% of the price paid by consumers and or subscribers whereas in the U.K., the rate is 8% of gross revenue.

Performance Royalties (Radio and Television)

In the U.S., 3 separate performing right organizations (known as PROs) – ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC – collect for songwriters, composers and music publishers for performances of their works on radio, television, live concerts, websites, airlines, etc.

Outside the U.S., each country has their own performing right organization negotiating fees and collecting royalties for the use of music in their territory. For example, SACEM collects in France, SOCAN in Canada, APRA in Australia and New Zealand, GEMA in Germany, SACM in Mexico, IMRO in Ireland and CASH in Hong Kong, to name but a few.

Through reciprocal agreements that ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC have with every major PRO of the world, U.S. writers’ works are represented and collected for in every country of the world with the money being sent by the local PRO to ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC depending upon which organization a U.S. writer belongs to.

Similarly, these agreements cover foreign country writers when their works are performed in the United States. For example, a U.K. writer member of the English Society PRS for Music or a Canadian writer member of SOCAN, would be covered by ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC in the U.S. with the money being forwarded to each writer’s foreign society after it has been collected.

To receive these monies, a U.S. writer must be a member of ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC. For foreign country writers, they must choose which PRO in the U.S. they want to collect for them. In the absence of a choice by the writer, the publisher will register the work based on its preference. If no choice is made, the song will default to ASCAP for collection and payment.

Money

Though most songwriters receive modest or little royalties for their songs performed outside the U.S., successful writers can make millions of dollars over the life of a song for foreign country performances and sales.

To give you an example of the type of monies being collected, in 2009 over 600 million dollars was forwarded to ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC for foreign performances of U.S. works. Most of the money is writer money as many publishers collect their money directly from each foreign collection society.

As to individual activity, a major worldwide hit song can generate well over $1,000,000 in foreign radio and television performance monies with a blockbuster feature film generating in excess of $500,000 composer royalties for foreign theatrical (movie theatre) performances alone during the initial year of activity. Putting these high end figures aside, it is important to know that tens of thousands of U.S. writers and publishers receive between $1 and $100,000 in foreign royalties each year for performances of their works on radio and television stations, live performances and website transmissions among many other types of uses.

Music Publishers
For many writers who have their own publishing companies or are signed to a U.S. publisher, they will make a deal with a foreign country publisher (a “sub-publisher”) to act on their behalf in that territory. The foreign sub-publishers register songs with the local collection societies, collect mechanical royalties, negotiate licenses and try to get new uses of a writer’s works (local recordings, television uses, etc.). These sub-publishers take a fee (based on a negotiated percentage of receipts) and send the rest of the money back to the U.S. publisher who then shares it with the writer.

Summary
Once your song is released outside the U.S., it is essential that you have some idea as to how things work in foreign territories. It is also essential that you have a representative (music publisher, lawyer, manager, etc.) who is experienced and knowledgeable in the ins and outs of foreign royalties. That is the only way that you will get what you are due – whether it is $10.00 or $10,000,000 – for the worldwide performances, licenses and sales of your works.
Never forget, real success is worldwide and you need to know how the business works outside of the United States.

© 2010 Jeff Brabec, Todd Brabec
Information contained in this article is from the Jeff and Todd Brabec book “Music, Money, And Success: The Insider’s Guide To Making Money In The Music Business” (Schirmer Trade Books/Music Sales/505 pages/6th Edition). See also the Brabecs’ website: www.MusicAndMoney.com.

Streaming From Towers, Clouds and Opening Pandora’s Box

- John Simson -

When Congress created the first performance right ever in the United States for recording artists and those who own the master recordings in 1995, (sometimes referred to as “neighboring rights” in Europe), it was not without a price. Fearing that a performance right would allow the copyright owners (typically record labels) to withhold the recordings, the new law mandated that ALL recordings, commercially released to the public, were subject to a compulsory license. Thus, while recording artists and copyright owners received a new right to receive remuneration when others used their recordings, they could not prevent anyone from streaming them, provided the streaming servicer was eligible for this new congressionally mandated license and was compliant with its terms and conditions. The practical result: any webcaster could stream any recording and no artist or label could stop them..

First, let’s look at which services are eligible to take advantage of this new right. Attempts by the music industry’s artists and labels to create a performance right started in the 1920’s but the broadcasting lobby has been strong enough to prevent passage of any law requiring them to pay for their over-the-air radio broadcasting despite a multitude of attempts over the past 80 years. The Digital Performance Right in Sound Recordings Act of 1995 (“DPRA”) only applied to streams that were sent via digital, cable or satellite and exempted the broadcasters terrestrial radio signals. It also “grandfathered” over-the-air radio’s HD radio signals, when that technology was finally introduced – so HD radio(sometimes referred to as DAB or digital audio broadcasting) is exempt from royalty payment for the sound recording unless offered as a subscription. Three years later, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (“DMCA”) also clarified some of the provisions of the DPRA and made clear that webcasting was covered under this new law. Finally, nearly 70 years after commencing their efforts, recording artists and record labels had a limited performance right.

Attempts by the National Association of Broadcasters to remain free of any obligation to pay royalties and to make their “future” competitors (internet and satellite radio) have to pay was successful in these 1995 and 1998 bills; but some might argue that the NAB was short-sighted: that by agreeing that new digital services must pay, the disparity would at some point shine a light on their exemption and undermine it. Why should internet radio and satellite radio pay recording artists when they streamed when broadcasters did not have to? Why should HD radio streams, which are quite similar to internet streams, be exempt from payments?

Language in the respective laws also appeared to insulate the broadcasters from paying when they “simulcasted” their over-the-air programming from a website. Simulcasts were digital, were over the internet and the Copyright Office issued an opinion that the concluded that broadcasters would have to pay for these simulcasts. An ensuing lawsuit, Bonneville v. Peters, attempted to overturn the Copyright Office ruling in favor of recording artists and labels, but when the Federal Court (3rd Cir) upheld the Copyright Office ruling, it became clear that broadcasters would finally have to pay for their simulcasts. And, while simulcasting was originally a very small part of the internet radio mix, it has grown quite dramatically over the past three years.

The compulsory license for streaming has several important limits: first and foremost, the streaming must be non-interactive. Thus, if a service wants to provide on-demand streaming – that you hear the recording you want, when you want it, that service is no longer eligible for statutory licensing and instead must negotiate licenses from each copyright owner whose master recordings it wants to offer. Services like Rhapsody and Napster that offer such on-demand streams have had to enter into thousands of licenses to obtain rights to the recordings they offer to their subscribers. So too will new services like Spotify and on-demand Slacker. Non-interactive webcasters, in contrast, need not enter into any licenses with copyright owners or artists; they simply need to notify the Copyright Office of their intent to stream music and then find the relevant license administered by SoundExchange to offer every single recording ever made!

The advantage of the statutory license is clear: on Rhapsody and Napster there are major gaps, groups like the Beatles who have refused to allow their recordings to be streamed by these on-demand services. Artists and copyright owners are free to withhold their righs. They are not “compelled” to license. For non-interactive statutory services, the Beatles are there, as are every other group and artist ever commercially released, albeit with certain programming restrictions. Where exactly is the line that defines interactivity? The statute, section 114()() , states that a service is interactive if is customized for a particular user. Doesn’t that sound like Pandora where each user has their own stream? One recent court decision, known as the “Launchcast” case seems to widen the definition and seemingly allows Pandora and other similar user-influenced services to fit within the statutory license, pushing the line of interactivity pretty close to strictly on-demand services.

The statutory license does come with programming restrictions. One of the limits of non-interactive streaming is the performance complement (insert cite) that only allows a service to play four songs by an artist in any three hour period. But a recent listen to one of these statutory webcasters shows you how little that restriction really means. Sure, you can’t get an all Madonna all the time channel or an all Bruce channel (like E Street Radio on Sirius/XM which requires the permission of copyright owner to waive this programming limitation); but a recent stream indicates that when you are listening to a “Beatles” channel, you may hear 4 Beatle songs in that 3 hour period, 4 more each from John, Paul and George from their solo careers, maybe even a few from Ringo’s too, totaling 20 songs from the group or its solo members in 3 hours. An artist like Eric Clapton also allows programmers to cram many of his performances into a three hour period by featuring Derek & the Dominoes, Yardbirds, Cream, Blind Faith, John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, many of which feature Clapton, in addition to his solo performances.

The programming restriction is not without problems: the restriction that you may not play more than 3 recordings in a row by an artist resulted in classical webcasters worrying that playing four movements in a row from a symphony violated the performance complement. For the purposes of the statute, is a symphony one work or recording? Or is each movement a work or recording? Does that depend upon whether the recording is released with each movement as a separate track?

Stations wishing to program a “tribute” to an artist who is celebrating their “25th” anniversary on record or some other milestone also have problems due to these programming restrictions and need to seek a waiver from the owner. It is not a problem for these services to host the artist and allow live performances as those are not covered by the statutory license.

One additional wrinkle that has developed in streaming are skips: the ability of the consumer to skip over tracks they do not want to hear. Are skips permissible under the statutory license? Over 10 years ago, before the creation of SoundExchange, the organization formed to administer the statutory license for streaming, the RIAA entered into an agreement on behalf of their member companies, with a service at rates much higher than are currently in place. In that deal, the service was allowed to offer their customers the ability to skip up to 6 songs per hour. Some might argue that this functionality should only exist where services are paying rates similar to those paid for this right in 1999, more than three times the current statutory rate. Nonetheless, the legacy of this particular deal is that it has become customary that a service may offer up to 6 skips an hour and still qualify for the statutory license. It is very important to note that including skips cannot increase the frequency that you hear an artist under the performance complement so the service must still comply with the 4 recordings/3 hour limitation. (Check on service that initially was allowed skips – believe it was MusicMatch and the rate was .040)

Currently, there is an effort underway to expand the performance right to cover over-the-air radio stations (or “terrestrial radio). Consistent with the earlier digital performance rights legislation adopted by Congress, an over-the-air or terrestrial radio right would be a compulsory license and would not allow record companies or artists to withhold content. But is this fair to an artist or label? Why shouldn’t an artist or label (who owns the rights to a recording) be allowed to provide an “exclusive” for a period of time to one radio station group? Imagine what those rights would be worth. If Bonneville, or Clear Channel or NPR could purchase the exclusive right to broadcast Lady Gaga’s next recording why shouldn’t the free market allow that? Why have these rights been stripped from artists and those who invest in them?

One of the potential sticking points to a terrestrial performance right might be the playlist restrictions currently in place for internet and satellite radio. While Sirius/XM has made its own deals with the estate of Elvis Presley, Bruce Springsteen and the estate of Frank Sinatra to offer an all Elvis channel, an E Street Radio channel and a Siriusly Frank channel, play restrictions were created to discourage all-artist channels and to give the stakeholders the ability to restrict them or allow them if terms could be agreed upon. Given the unlimited spectrum of the internet, imagine a universe where there was an all Lady GaGa channel, an all Beatles channel, an all Arcade Fire channel and any other artist you can think of. It would certainly discourage sales if all a listener had to do was tune in to the all-artist channel to hear a song by that artist. But terrestrial radio has never had such playlist restrictions. Syndicated programming like “Beatles Brunch” or tributes to particular artists would violate the performance complement.. Broadcasters have experimented with an all-Elvis station in years’ past but that is not likely to be an issue as all-artist channels have not proven successful on terrestrial radio. However, blocks of an artist’s music have been staples of over-the-air radio for many years and they are likely to balk at a license that doesn’t include differential treatment. Short of that, the radio broadcasters would need to obtain waivers from each record label, to allow programming that doesn’t comply with the performance complement.

Services have inquired whether or not SoundExchange, the collecting society representing nearly every record label and artist in the United States, could provide these waivers on behalf of its members. Unfortunately, such a practice would violate anti-trust laws, so waivers must be obtained from each individual copyright owner of sound recordings. One possible shortcut that SoundExchange might be able to offer is a “waiver page” where each copyright owner provided a link to their waiver rules. This would allow a service to click on a link, reach the appropriate owner and make their request for a waiver. It would not change the basic underlying requirement that each copyright owner would have to create their own waiver rules – and that SoundExchange could not do it for them.

Statutory or compulsory licensing has created an opportunity in the United States that exists nowhere else in the World. Services like Last.fm and Pandora, who are using the statutory license cannot offer their services elsewhere due to the difficulty of licensing their services in other countries. But the statutory license also created a major problem in the United States that Congress should have foreseen and addressed: notice to those whose works were affected.

In 1995, Congress allowed digital, cable and satellite services to use any commercially released recording provided they pay a statutory fee for the privilege, notify the copyright owner of the use and comply with the other conditions of the license. What Congress didn’t do was to provide an education campaign for all of the artists, their estates and heirs, all copyright owners of sound recordings, be they labels, producers or the artists themselves. Congress should have provided funds for major advertisements in music publications, in USA Today and other general publications to notify recording artists and record labels that this new law would allow unlimited use of their products in exchange for a fee, with instructions on where to go to find payment.

In the absence of this Congressional effort, SoundExchange, the collective management organization, charged with administering this statutory license, has spent the past 10 years trying to educate the industry and while SoundExchange has grown dramatically, it still faces major challenges from certain constituents who are unaware of this new revenue stream and this new use of their recordings. In the age of internet scams and oil or lottery money from some faraway land, an e-mail or phone call from someone telling an artist that there are new royalties for them is often met with a skeptical response.
Many artists have turned down the offer to register for their royalties fearing that it is a scam despite all of the press coverage SoundExchange has generated to shine a light on these new royalties. Other artists have registered after repeated contacts over a period of months or even years. Usually, it is after they’ve heard from other artists they know who are receiving checks. Once in the SoundExchange system, and receiving quarterly payments, these same artists become the organizations biggest champions for collectively representing them and fighting for their right to receive fair value when others use their recordings over cable, satellite and internet.

Recording artists in the United States, despite these new laws which are generating new and important revenue streams (estimated to reach $250 Million in 2010), still suffer from the poorest protection of any modern industrialized nation (other than China). In European countries, not only do recording artists have the right to collect royalties when their works are used on internet, satellite and cable services, but they also have the right to receive royalties when their recordings are used by radio, television, business establishments like pubs, restaurants and nightclubs, shops, stadiums and anywhere a commercial business is using music to create a better environment for shopping, dining or employee morale. It remains to be seen if U.S. recording artists and labels will continue to fight for the rights already enjoyed by their peers around the World and whether Congress will be sympathetic to their petitions.

John Simson
Sound Exchange
Sept 20, 2010

John Snyder Interview: The Snapshots Music and Arts Foundation

Bio: John Snyder built his name as a producer of jazz and blues albums, working on more than 350 albums, including more than 34 Grammy nominees and five Grammy winners. He has held executive posts at several major labels and worked with jazz legends Dizzy Gillespie, Ornette Coleman, Max Roach, Gerry Mulligan, Dave Brubeck, Sun Ra, Etta James, and Chet Baker, among others. He is the president and founder of Artists House Music and the Conrad N. Hilton Eminent Scholar in Music Industry Studies at Loyola University, New Orleans.

John, what do you see as the challenges to artists and in the music business today?

How to connect with people who care about what you do; how to balance what you do between what you give and what you sell; how to maximize customer service; how to make a living being creative; in short, how to run your life as a creative person as a business. It is a challenge for most artists to appreciate and participate in the business aspects of what they do much less appreciate the “art” of business.

The fact is, by virtue of what they do, artists create copyrights that create rights that create revenue streams. If musicians and artists were to fully appreciate the power that they have to create wealth from their imaginations and their natural, entrepreneurial character they wouldn’t have to work the day job to sustain their creative pursuits.

Challenges are just opportunities dressed up, and the opportunities for creating a sustainable career as an artist have never been greater. There are no longer any barriers between you and your customers. You can communicate directly with them and you must do that. It’s no longer about the impersonal “hit” it’s about the personal connection, and this is something that has to be nourished and respected.

It’s always been about the personal connection but when I was in love with Aretha there was no way for me to tell her that or for her to know me as someone whose life she changed. Things are different today. There are so many ways available to the artist and fan that it’s actually exciting, and that’s the beauty of these challenges and opportunities: they are empowering to all concerned.

The myth of the starving artist and the reality of the patronage-dependent artist, whether princes or record companies, are corrupt narratives and philosophically passé. There are many examples and much evidence to indicate that success can be had without any connection whatsoever to the major companies or Starbucks because they have health benefits or the NEA because you can fit in with what they want.

Do you think it is easier today to reach success as a musician?

It’s easier on the one hand and harder on the other. The Long Tail tells us that everything sells but the bad news is that it sells a hundred copies. If there are 15 million bands on MySpace, how does your band or you as an artist compete? The answer is, I think, you don’t. Heck, your competition is Facebook, video games and cell phone apps. You can’t beat that.

It’s not you against the world, it’s you against yourself and your own creativity and work ethic. Is it easier to work harder? No, it isn’t. It’s hard to work harder and it is unrelenting. That is the reality. You can, in fact, have success in the creative world if you’re smart, you’re extremely hard working, and you understand business and how your intellectual property are the assets of your business.

In the sense that the course is clear and the job is obvious, and the results are worth the effort and the sacrifice, it is easier today to reach success as a musician, as an artist. Living by your wits and your work is scary and exhilarating. Understanding your work from a business perspective is the safety net for your high wire life.

Mick Jagger went to the London School of Finance and runs the Stones like a business, and he is a very hands-on manager: he counts the money. The Stones were completely ripped off in their earlier years but these experiences became the levers of education and corrective behavior, and success.

Taking responsibility for your life isn’t easy, it’s hard, but once you do that, success is much more likely. You improve around the edges but you’re following a plan, with goals and objectives, and next actions – a to do list – that is tied to dates, deliverables and metrics. Everything flows from the mission, through your strategic goals, through your tactical objectives for accomplishing those goals, and finally through the specific, measurable actions that accomplishing your objectives. Random acts of improvement are to be avoided; everything should be connected.

I guess another way to put it is, the new entrepreneurship is the art and artifice of it all, the amazing potential of it. Look at it this way, there is a market for everything including your work, you just have to find it, connect with it. You can attempt to create it, to “build it”, but it really is like the sculpture in the stone, waiting to be found. For the musician, the sculpture is the career and business is the tool box needed to find it.

An artist is not somebody who waits to be found and saved and made to sparkle, an artist is somebody who goes and gets it, someone who, like every other entrepreneur, doesn’t take no for an answer, who continues to chip away to find what they know is there. The entrepreneur and the musician share other traits as well: they don’t want to work for someone else, they can innovate and accept risk, they can communicate and they see and perceive things that others do not, they think, observe, do, and make.

The reason it is easier for an individual artist to create a career for herself is because it is easier to distribute and market creative “products” directly to fans and customers, thanks to Mr. Internet. The music biz used to control content creation and distribution and now it controls neither, and their overall stake is decreasing. Yet, the global music business is more profitable than ever.

Why is that? Universal is doing something right?

No, Universal is not doing something right, at least not on the label side, but they have, indirectly, help to create an environment that allows individuals to succeed completely outside of their orbit. Nature abhors a vacuum and the music business created a huge vacuum with its emphasis on sameness and mass market, its worship of profit, its lack of connection to fans, and its disrespect for artists, workers, and customers.

When basic human values, that have been cast out of a process, are restored, there is progress and change and usually for the better. When a process is solely dedicated to the personal enrichment of those who control it, it will eventually fail. The profit motive was the 20th century Midas touch. When we begin to see profit as a byproduct of productivity, innovation and human advancement, we will ring the harmolodic bell of the cultural economy in which everyone may participate as creators and consumers of art, encapsulating capitalism in a spirit of fairness and concern for others.

Do you think musicians are becoming more educated with copyright laws and their rights?

No. Most musicians do not know that when a songwriter writes down an original song they are creating a copyright. Most musicians don’t really realize they’re creating statutorily protected assets by virtue of what they do. If you record your song or anyone else’s, you’re creating a sound recording copyright. In that instant in time you have six exclusive rights the first two of which are to copy and distribute. That makes you a music publisher and a recording company. So what are you going to do about it? The default position is nothing. But from these rights come revenue and income, come careers, conversations, employment and enjoyment.

Copyright law calls you the “author” of a “work” and as such you may “authorize” others to use your rights. These transfers and licenses can create revenue streams but in order to monetize your rights you need to know what they are and how to allow others to use them.

Copyright protection is interesting. It is actually in the Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, concerning the powers of the legislative branch of the government. Right after the right to print money and levy taxes and before the power to make treaties and war, there’s this power to protect the inventor and the author by securing for them the exclusive rights to their writings and discoveries for a limited period of time.

Yet on the other hand, copyright means nothing. Everyone feels free to ignore its prohibitions against using someone else’s intellectual property without permission. It’s an interesting dichotomy, and ownership really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be nor does it mean the same thing it used to mean. That’s what record companies still haven’t figured out: what does “ownership” mean in digital era? It is certainly different from the analog era.

Do you think an artist should have to measure their success based on the quality of their work, versus their fan club? The market is saturated with manufactured talent.

You have to connect with people who care about what you do. These are your fans and your customers. You need to know them, who they are, what they like besides you, and when are their birthdays. Not everyone is going to have time for you or like you or even know enough about you to care one way or the other. You have to connect and communicate with those people who do. Where do you find them? How do you get them to care about you? What do you do once you get their attention?

I don’t necessarily think that the quality of an artist’s work is measured by the response of an audience. And I don’t necessarily think that an artist is the best judge of his or her own work. And I don’t think the market is to be trusted either, unless perversely. An artist is constantly changing and improving, in big ways and small, some imperceptible, some disturbing.

That’s the key and that’s what we respect. And they are relentless about it. They have goals and plans to achieve them. It’s called practicing, doing, writing. They understand method, the line that connects goals and needs, plans and deeds. That’s key for an artist and these traits can be applied to their businesses to very good effect. They can be applied to life to good effect.

The artist speaks in an authentic voice. It’s authenticity that reaches people first and keeps them around the longest. You can’t fake it but it’s also hard being you, being real, being honest. The best thing for an artist to do is to be humble in her determination to be better and do better and to connect with others who care about her messages and insights, her feelings and her magic. Authenticity is something you are, not something you dress for.

There is a great deal of talent in the world and therefore in the “market” because everyone has the ability to be creative and to be original. Education often removes or truncates this creative spirit because it’s hard to quantify with a standardized test, so we lose a lot of art and artists to the demands of education. From all that sprouts unnourished and unbowed comes an entire ecosystem of talent and skills. The challenge is to become a participant, a contributing member of this community, and to flourish in that ecosystem. Meeting that challenge is much more a matter of your own efforts rather than the efforts of another.

If you’re talking about Dancing with the Stars, you’re right, there is a manufactured quality to be sure, but that’s entertainment, not art. But that entertainment can certainly provide many creative opportunities for many people who consider themselves artists. I’m sure that individually, everyone who works on that show thinks of him or herself an artist.

You have to care about something, to find meaning in something. Meaning is bestowed, not inherent. We bestow meaning, and when we do that we can become passionate about something and want to work on it in a very focused way. Passion replaces aggression yet passion is not passive, it is active, it is energy – it creates stuff. And when we see someone who is passionate we are immediately drawn to that person and to what they are passionate about.

So, the secret is passion and authenticity. Be real and be great. And then make friends. Give them stuff, sell them stuff, think of new cool things you can do for them; respect them. It is not easy being an artist and it is never about being one thing. It’s all over you all the time and you can never get it off or make sense of it. You can live with it and put it to work for you or you can ignore it and always wonder what went wrong. Your fans care about you. You should be so lucky. They are not your adversaries.

Has the mismanagement by record labels has left many musicians signed to labels in a state of distrust?

You could say that. But record companies that were brilliantly managed were not necessarily good for artists. Traditionally artists have gotten the low end of the deal, mostly because when they made money it was essentially covering all of the bad bets made by the record companies, that is 8 or 9 out of ten records released. That’s a lot of money to make up.

The thing about mistrust is that it’s passive. And no good comes from it. The idea for artists is to be informed and to understand their rights and what’s actually happening when they authorize others to use their rights. It’s not up to the record companies to educate you and to “do the right thing” about your rights. That’s up to you.

Labels that are service oriented, to both the artists and the customers, will survive. And those that aren’t will not survive. The key for labels is transparency. Every penny of a “sale” should be accounted for and clear for all to see who shares those pennies. Accounting practices that prohibit audits of manufacturing invoices and that provide no real data on which to make an intelligent decision as to their veracity must go and artists must demand that they go. The artist must realize that it is her rights that the record company is using and that how those rights are transferred and used are up to her.

Most all businesses that fail, fail because of bad management, and the music business has had its share of that. The invention of the CD covered up a lot of bad management and when god gave the business the Internet, which could have covered up a lot more bad management, they rejected it and at the same time pulled off all of the received wisdom that was cloaking their bad management revealing their fecklessness and incompetence. Not a pretty sight and, of course, as a double bad, it would be unwise for anyone to trust them further.

What are some of the issues in the business that you see as hurdles?

We’ve touched on these: lack of transparency, the inability to redefine what ownership means, the distrust the business has for its artists and customers, its inability to see itself as a service organization, its lack of understanding of values oriented marketing, its inability to believe in magic. The music business doesn’t know the difference between what it did right and what it did wrong.

As for the musician’s business, the hurdles are getting out of bed, putting on shoes, taking care of your body (the platform for the delivery of the art you say you care about), your inability to read a book, your unhelpful sense of entitlement, your failure to appreciate the economic as well as creative power of your “art”, and your failure to understand that with your ability to make wealth out of your imagination, your naturally entrepreneurial character and your innate understanding of method, you have ALL of the advantages. And yet you complain or you’re poor or you’re unappreciated. Please. What you are, is lazy and you are not thoughtful about your business OR your art. At least that’s true for those who are pretending.

There are common hurdles for the legacy businesses and the new artist businesses. In a time of plenty, of infinite possibilities, when everything sells and has an audience if not a community of fans, how do you stand out? How do you compete? How do you compete with free? How do you connect to memes and trends and waves and currents? These are objectives in the form of questions and there are distinct methods and ways of answering them. The answers create responsibilities, which create actions that make things happen. Be responsible! Jump those hurdles!

Should the myth that continues to go around that there is no money to be made in music be dispelled?

The myth of the starving artist has to go and the myth that you can’t make money in music and art has to go. Living the creative life, as an artist or a musician, a writer or a computer programmer, is not easy. But if you learn more you know more and this knowledge will lead you to business ideas and applications of your intellectual property that you had not thought of previously. The myth of the stupid artist is the most dangerous myth because it’s self-imposed and ultimately destructive. If you do not read a book you will be stupid forever and that is no myth.

Speaking about education, how did the universities miss the boat in empowering music and arts majors to market and manage their own careers?

Business schools have an uneasy relationship with academe, it seems to me. But then again, they are flourishing. And there are new trends and currents that will have their affect, even on the disproportionately staid. The Internet and media have not only changed everything for the artist they changed everything for the businessperson as well. It’s hard to keep up! And universities that glorify disciplines have difficulty adjusting to the meme of the present. It’s understandable.

Academia is facing the same kinds of issues faced by the music business, the film business, and now, more than ever, the book business. It could very easily be the next model to fail if it can’t adapt. For those of us who respect the institution we believe that good governance and thoughtful management will win the day. We are idealists.

The reason business and the creative enterprise (music and art, writing and documenting) are tied together has nothing to do with what either wants or doesn’t want. It has everything to do with what is, what actually happens when art, music, writing, painting, etc. are made manifest: rights are instantly created that are as real as rock and they can earn “revenue” in so many ways that it would take a book or two to list them, much less discuss the issues involved in allowing others to use them on your behalf. The Brabec Brothers did that: Music and Money is the name of the book.

Many schools are dealing with the reality in a very direct way. University of Miami is very advanced in this respect. Even New England Conservatory has a new and ongoing entrepreneurship program for its young geniuses. There is still a very large gap between, say, theatre and dance departments and the businesses of theatre and dance, but I think that’s changing. Arts entrepreneurship is such an empowering concept and such a natural fit to the creative person’s character and mindset.

It is also true that attending a college or university is an end in itself. When you study history or philosophy it isn’t necessarily because you intend to make your living at it. The same is true for music and art. It is a widely held view that attending a music school will enrich your life no matter what you end up doing, and that further, the methodologies and disciplines involved will apply to your life no matter the specific profession.

But here’s the thing about that: the results of what you do as a musician, an actor, dancer or artist of any kind, do in fact create rights that are exclusive to you, as “author”, and it would be irresponsible to ignore that. Whether music and art are just parts of an educated life or not, the amazing rights and economic impact that flow from their creation should clearly be a part of that education.

Yet it sounds like there will always be the need for managers and agents to help artists.

Artists and musicians need managers to manage their businesses when they themselves can no longer handle the work. It is vitally important for the role of the “new” manager be clearly defined: that person is in effect managing a small business with multiple revenue streams from multiple “products”, all inter-related. This includes the management of resources and of people, of coordinating the efforts of a number of people who are involved in their own way in the enterprise that we call “artist”. It includes understanding money, finance and accounting, cash flow analysis, balance sheets and income statements.

Therefore, get yourself an MBA or a business minded person to partner with you in this respect, and make sure they that person understands copyright and has read the books. Not your momma, not your girl/boy friend, not your uncle Fred the real estate lawyer. You the musician/artist need to understand your business before you trust someone else to run your business. How do you know if they have any idea what they’re doing? Read the book!

Partner up! If you’re a performer, you need that marketing kid on your side, and that tech kid, and that money kid, and that graphic design kid. You need a team of multi-media experts to do what they do around what you do, and it needs to work for them on that same level. If you can find yourself in that community, you face a happy and creative life of friends for life. But remember it’s about two things: head and heart. Learn your business, advance your art, live your life on your terms.

John, you have spoken to the point that music when produced from a creative place with great skill is magic. This seems the reason why we support it.

Well, without getting too fancy about it, music is just another form of communication that allows us to express how we feel to others, and especially when it’s wordless it’s subject to vast interpretation and it encourages if not demands an interaction with another person or persons – a conversation if you will. This is why it is magical. It is magical because it causes unknown things to happen and to take root and we will certainly never know of all of consequences or ramifications of this magic. But one thing for sure: it lives, it spreads, it grows, and it changes people and it changes history.

I have had the occasion to be producing a recording that wasn’t on or had fallen off track. I found a way to tell the band about how I viewed our time together: we woke up this morning and nothing existed and we go to bed to night and there are five songs on tape or disc, any one of which has the power to affect people’s lives in a positive way if not change the world. That’s a pretty big power. Power implies responsibility and opportunity and creative power makes magic at the drop of a hat. We support it because it takes us into it and then into ourselves and we come out affected maybe even changed, maybe even better. We support it because it becomes us and we become it.

It seems more artists are seeking resources and information to create their own success.

I’m glad to hear it! They’ve been fighting it for a long time! Our website has been trying to provide information to musicians and entrepreneurs, at least get the conversation started (www.artistshousemusic.org). Entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, green entrepreneurship, are all hot topics, and to those we add, arts entrepreneurship. It’s a tautology, I know, but sometimes you have to say things twice.

John Snyder
12.27.10